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Comment on Landlines are dying out. But to some, they're a lifelineparent

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If power or internet goes out, wired VOIP phones won't work. Both the power and the internet have way worse reliability than the copper wire telephone where I live in a top 1% part of California.

It doesn't quite contradict what you said, but I live in distinctly non-top-1% part of Vermont where power is not very reliable. One of the line workers I talked to affectionately described the local distribution system as "fence wire on tall posts". It runs through the woods and frequently gets taken out by falling trees. On the plus side, it's easy to repair with one well-trained person on an ATV.

Anyway, our area recently got fiber internet installed. In a recent power outage, I was surprised to learn that the optional VOIP phone service installed along with the internet kept working. There's an on-site battery backup for each ONT (terminal at the house). So while it's true that if internet goes out you lose VOIP phone, the fiber cable is pretty durable and the phone connection is a lot more resilient to short power outages than I would have thought.

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